Asylum seekers are sleeping on Toronto streets again. How did we end up here?
CBC
Hundreds of people — including those seeking asylum — have once again taken to sleeping on Toronto's streets in front of shelters and churches.
The city's shelter system is once again at capacity, turning away nearly 300 people a day, the city said Thursday. While it's continuously moving "dozens" of people from overflowing churches to shelters, hotels or permanent housing where possible, it is nowhere close to meeting demand, said Lindsay Broadhead, the city's chief communication officer.
"Nothing that's happening right now is good enough," said Broadhead.
"What we're trying to do is make the best and highest use with what we can do and look to our other levels of government partners to support."
The re-emerging situation is something the Broadhead says the city forecasted this summer when hundreds of asylum seekers and refugees were stuck on streets with nowhere to go. The issue made headlines, with three churches in north Toronto housing mainly Black refugees and asylum seekers when the city's overburdened shelter system couldn't offer them beds.
Last month, the city requested an additional $750,000 in funding from the federal government to compensate the churches and community organizations housing those on the streets, but Broadhead says the government missed their September deadline, forcing the city and community organizations to make do again instead.
In an email to CBC Toronto, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada said it had already allocated an extra $97 million in funding this summer to Toronto to help provide interim housing for asylum claimants. Beyond that, it says it's "working closely with most impacted provinces and municipalities" to provide support.
"Responding to the needs of asylum claimants requires collaboration and engagement... The Government of Canada has been and will continue to be there for the province of Ontario and the city of Toronto, but in order to address the global migration crisis, we must have full engagement from all levels of government."
As of Sept. 25, the department says it had almost 3,500 hotel rooms in six provinces for temporary housing for asylum claimants.
At Dominion Church International in North York, volunteers have been housing hundreds of asylum seekers since the summer, but say they had to turn away some Wednesday night.
Volunteers say use of the church space was restricted by their landlord, limiting the number of asylum seekers they could take in.
"We were antsy, we were nervous, we did not know where they were going to end up," said Miriam Kutesa, the site manager.
More than 100 people were asked to move to the street as a result, said Rev. Eddie Jjumba, a volunteer at the church.
But after word of the new group of stranded asylum seekers spread, Jjumba says the church was told by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada on Thursday that about 92 people have been approved to move to a hotel in Windsor, Ont.
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